Academic Background

Biography

Research Interests:

Though I love to teach American literature most of my research has
dealt with popular fiction and the various ways that Americans
represented themselves in the twentieth century. My earlier work looked
at representations of paranoia in clinical, popular and political
discourses, focusing on the way that paranoia (along with other newly
reconfigured varieties of madness, such as hysteria) allowed people in
the twentieth century to conceptualize psychopathology in terms of
gender.

For the past few years, though, I've been interested in popular
religious fiction and American evangelical Christian popular culture. I have been
exploring ways that American evangelical writers and readers
successfully combine things taken from pop culture with ways of thinking
and reading embedded in the traditions of
American Protestantism.

Courses:

EN 692: Evangelical Fiction and American Faith

EN 420: Pulp and Popular Fiction

EN 218: Contemporary American Literature

EN 266: American Literature of the Early 20th Century

EN 204: Strategies in the Analysis of Effective Writing (Rhetoric and Writing)

"Unsafe Fantasy: The typological fantastic in the Christian supernatural thriller"

Biography

I grew up on a small farm (an apiary) in
the Slate River Valley, outside of Thunder Bay. I did my undergraduate
work at WLU, though it took a long time because I took some years off to
live in Czechoslovakia after the fall of the communist government
there. Returning to Canada I did my graduate studies at McMaster, and
after teaching for a couple of years there and at SUNY Buffalo, I moved
to Halifax to work at Dalhousie. But my family's roots are in Ontario,
so was delighted to be able to move back to work in the interdisciplinary environment here at Laurier Brantford.

I don't have a whole lot of spare time left over after work and
after chasing the many kids in my house around, but when I do get a bit
of it I like to do a bit of swimming, and to get out and hike someplace
with lots of trees. The Dundas Valley is one of my favourite places in
the world.